Georgia primary runoff: Rick Jackson and Burt Jones in dead heat
ATLANTA - Georgia voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday to decide a pair of historically tight Republican primary runoff elections that political pollsters call a statistical dead heat.
An Insider Advantage poll shows the runoff races in dead heats, with the weather possibly playing a factor in the decision.
Georgia primary runoff races
What we know:
Final polling numbers from Insider Advantage show a microscopic margin in the race for governor, with Rick Jackson holding a 48% to 47% lead over Burt Jones.
In the U.S. Senate race, Mike Collins leads Derek Dooley by a similarly tight margin of 50% to 48%.
With a margin of error sitting at 3.5%, both contests are completely up for grabs as polling experts label this the hardest election to call in modern state history.
Trump, Kemp endorsements
The backstory:
The campaigns faced a massive disruption over the weekend when heavy political endorsements suddenly dropped. Donald Trump posted his official endorsement of Collins on social media early Sunday morning, taking a sharp swipe at Dooley for not voting in the 2016 or 2020 elections. Later that afternoon, Kemp came off the sidelines to back Jones for governor, a move that caught many political insiders by surprise given past disagreements between the two men over 2020 election fraud claims.
Weather and voter turnout
What we don't know:
Election officials do not know how weather patterns will impact people who plan to vote in person on Tuesday. Heavy rain is forecast to hit certain sections of the state while missing others, creating an unpredictable environment that could easily stall overall voter turnout.
It also remains unclear exactly how many people will turn out on election day compared to the large numbers who participated in early voting. Because the endorsements arrived long after hundreds of thousands of Republicans had already submitted their ballots, analysts cannot predict if the endorsements came in early enough to create a meaningful wave of momentum.
The Source: The details in this article come from Matt Towery, a veteran political pollster with Insider Advantage, who explained the final numbers and statistical gender splits of the primary data.